Hospitalization
Mar. 13th, 2004 01:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight we had another session of the scifi Shadake game. Before the game, Shadarack mentioned that his previously alluded to absense in May is still going to happen, but he is also going to be gone next week and the week after. So I had to indispose his character by the end of the session.
Shadarack found himself imprisoned in the pyramid, stripped of all his possessions and left on his own. His captor -- a drakivolki wizard with two gun-toting aides -- asked him what he'd been doing there, and what if anything he and his friends had found poking around before being accosted by the robots etc. They told him that if he really *was* an archaeologist (as he'd claimed) that he might be able to find a place on their team. He still wouldn't be allowed to *leave*, of course, since if an accurate description of the city ever got out it'd be picked clean by treasure-hunting vultures in seconds, but he could live comfortably with them until they were ready to go public.
Shadarack told them he wanted to think about it for a while, and as soon as they'd gone started focusing on his luck. "Get me out of this cell!" It wasn't long before the cell door opened, and the wizard snapped at him, "Come with me!"
The wizard led him outside to where one of the pyramids -- the one that party had fought the tripod from, that had been badly damaged in the fight -- was glowing brighter and brighter pink. "What did your friends do to that pyramid, and how do I stop it?" the wizard demanded. Shadarack tried to bluff the wizard into letting him go so he could 'fix the pyramid' while the wizard and his staff fled to safety because it was 'much too dangerous', but the wizard didn't seem receptive to the idea of leaving his captive alone.
So Shadarack sulked as the wizard led him to the pyramid, again focusing his luck on 'Escape'. And so, just as the group reached the center of the pyramid and started climbing the ramp, the pyramid exploded! Shadarack was thrown to the ground, unhurt, as were the two guards, but the drakivolki was devastated -- his blue scale had disintegrated as he'd tried to shield himself from the blast, and his fur was gray and withered, like a very old man (which he hand't been before).
And all four of them were glowing pink, as were the walls, floor, cieling, and everything around.
One of the guards ran to help the wizard, and Shadarack led the other guard outside, into the now-dark city on the pretense of shutting down the pyramid before it did more damage. His escape attempt wasn't quite flawless, as the guard saw him in time to try to shoot him, but the guard's pistol didn't work, and he got away.
At least, to the edge of the city, where he sat by a tooth near the still-intact bridge of rail ties over the chasm, focusing his luck on escaping to the surface. For fifteen minutes he sat, focusing his luck but refusing to actually *try* to get to the surface, until finally the rock beneath him crumbled, dropping him to the ground far below.
He landed in a deep, soft patch of dust, soft enough for him to survive the fall, and while the giant burrowing worm creature attacked him, instead of getting swallowed he was only impaled and dragged around by the leg, and finally dumped in a worm tunnel large enough for him to crawl through, that led up to the caverns above (eventually, after a very long, winding climb). He looted a knife and a grappling hook from a convenient corpse, cursed as the magic healing salve didn't seem to work on the wound on his leg, and headed where his luck took him.
The trilobytes didn't take this sitting down, of course, quickly gathering to surround him and drive him towards the waiting turrets. The turrets were blind to him, though, and instead killed the trilobytes en masse as they entered the room.
After many tries, he managed to hook the grappling hook at the top of the 40 foot shaft they'd come down to enter this level, but he was carrying too much weight (in addition to all the junk scavenged off the dead corpse, he'd pieced together a suit of makeshift armor from the piles of debris the turrets were hidden in) and was pretty weak, and even in the low Martian gravity couldn't make it all the way to the top without resting. He tried to hang there to rest, but was worried about losing his grip (or something) and decided to slide back down and rest at the bottom.
While resting, he saw a light come down the tunnel towards him. He tried to hide in the pile of rubble, but the pink glow gave him away to the mine-cart-riding hannah that arrived to greet him.
"There he is! He's in the turret room," said the hannah, from safely outside the turret room, over a martian-style communicator. "He's right there." "No, he's definately in the kill zone, I don't care what the sensor readings say. Override manually and have the turrets lock on and fire." Which they did -- at the hannah himself, killing him almost instantly.
Shadarack wasted no time looting the corpse once the turrets had gone back into hiding. The communicator went dead as he picked it up, but he dragged the somewhat soupy body out of the mine cart, and scraped it out of the armor, which he put on in place of the makeshift mining armor he'd assembled. The PPF also stopped working as he picked it up, but the gun at least fired a laser when he pulled the trigger, although it looked awfully weak.
He hid the body in the rubble pile (although he couldn't hide the trail of blood smeared across the floor), and sat down to wait until he was calmer and more rested before climbing up the rope.
Meanwhile, Hesperius, Adam, and Jackie were preparing to rescue Jackie's alchemy set (oh, and Shadarack too maybe). There was a small town near the mine, a dying mining town (since the mine had dried up) dwarfed by a large, brand new Miracle Foundation outpost. The Miracle Foundation employees who showed Jackie to their public alchemy lab were sure to warn him away from the horribly dangerous mine, which was really dangerous and no one had ever found anything valuable in, despite all the rumors. TM. Jackie ignored the spiel, and did his alchemy stuff.
At midnight, Hesperius and Adam were rested, Jackie was finishing up his alchemy, and the mana for mages worldwide regenerated. Hesperius created a dozen or so EMP grenades to stun the turrets, some sulfur-based rocket launcher rings, and they headed back into the mine. They did spot a pair of people from the base following their progress with binoculors, but that wasn't about to stop them.
Hesperius was the first person down the shaft to the turret room, and spotted a smear of blood on the floor below, and a strange pink glow. To better aim at the turrets, he poked his head down to try to spot them -- and they popped up and fired at him! The first shot killed him instantly, then the rest ripped into his corpse as it tumbled lifeless to the ground at Shadarack's feet. Shadarack tried to fire back at the turrets, but his laser was useless.
However, Hesperius had had one grenade armed and ready to throw as he took his fatal glance, and as the others scattered across the floor, that one went off, detonating the others and filling the whole turret room with fractal bolts of EMP-laced lightning. All the turrets were stunned.
Jackie swooped down and bottled Hesperius' remains, hoping that he could be revived at a hospital (since bottle magic would hold him in stasis indefinately). Adam swooped down and tried to pick up Shadarack, only to have his armor lose its enchantment, and his PPF 'pop', as he touched the glowing form of his employer.
At that point, Shadarack mentioned that he was dispelling magic items on touch, so after a brief debate about whether or not to continue on to rescue Jackie's lab, they dragged him out of the mine at the end of a loooooong rope. And attached him to their vehicle at the end of a loooong rope, flying him through the air for an hour dangling in the breeze.
Shadarack was talked into paying for Hesperius' treatment (as bottled charity cases went to the bottom of the hospital's list for treatment, and when was the list ever empty?), and the doctors told the party that they could probably bring him back with most of his memories and faculties intact. They also called Karada, Hespirius' sister, and asked her about his nature -- she answered with the truth as she knew it, which was almost entirely false.
The party also set up an appointment to get Shadarack's condition looked at, for the next day, with one doctor 'Cursefiend'. That left them with some time. After doing a little shopping, Adam decided to contact the Constantines and have them set up his meeting with Taral. Jackie and Karada would go with him for moral and possibly physical support, while Shadarack would stay behind and watch over Hesperius' treatment, and try to find buyers for the assorted martian artifacts they had recovered.
The Constantines offered their own home, or at least the family mansion in New Skypass, as a neutral location where Taral and Adam could meet without fear. Each was allowed as many supporters as they wanted to monitor the proceedings, but they'd have to remain outside the chamber where the actual discussion would take place. Taral and Adam were scanned for any magic spells or items, and stripped of all weapons, before being shown into the chamber. They were warned that the mages on duty would be watching for any sign of magic, and would consider any spell cast to be a hostile action.
Taral had a long rambling spiel to give Adam about why he was chasing him (his beading ability would let Taral work through him more efficiently) and why he'd attacked him in the first place (Taral's job on Luna was to drive away Terran immigrants who didn't have proper work).
Adam found this interesting, but it was only a cover for the little mechanical spider Taral had kept hidden on his person to inject Adam with a hypnotic drug, so that when Taral told Adam to take the ring he was offering and let its magic affect him willingly, Adam found it hard to resist. He managed to shake it off before the spell finished taking effect, but didn't reveal that to Taral -- instead pretending to obey the Zox's orders until Taral dismissed him, looking pleased with his 'prize'.
At which point he turned Taral in to the Constantines for trying to use magic on him. Taral had given him three spells to bead to use on the rest of the party, and once taken away from Shadarack's person they were obviously magically enchanted, where they hadn't been going in. This alerted the guards to the 'there is no magic here' illusion Taral had cast, and they were ordered to sieze him...
...but Aphid, Taral's hacker, hit a button and set off the prepared scripts that took out the lights and communication, and unlocked all the doors, so that they could make their escape.
Of course the party wouldn't let them get away THAT easily. Jackie shot a 'steel wall' shell to block the hallway Taral was trying to run down, quite effectively -- the wall was invisible, but it was still as strong as steel, but was then charmed by Taral -- once he realized he was trapped -- to attack the guards (and bring their wrath down on him as well as on Taral and company). Taral's Procyonisks went invisible and backstabbed Adam and a guard, although the one going after Adam bumped him accidentally and alerted him in time for him to dodge her knife. Taral's Chittick fired wildly at Adam and Jackie, hitting once in four shots, with that not getting through Jackie's PPF -- and was then slaughtered by return fire from the guards, which he couldn't dodge and didn't have the armor to withstand.
Then Karada blew up the entire room with one of the rockets Hesperius had created earlier, given to her by Jackie. Karada's PPF deflected the blast, Adam captured the part that would have hit him, and Taral used magic to avoid harm, but the guards in that half of the room were badly injured... and the feriphal hacker and procyonisk sneaks were toast. And Jackie was alive, but unconscious.
The steel wall was also damaged enough to Taral to blast a hole in it with his magic and escape down the hallway, with Adam and two guards in hot pursuit. Karada was restrained by the Constantine mages before she could do any more damage, so when Taral turned one of the guards against the other, it was down to just Adam chasing him.
...and the next set of guards he came to, he convinced them that Adam had broken the truce, and that his friends had all been killed, and they believed him, opening fire at Adam. Adam had time to swing his sword once at Taral, but with the evil wizard's magical protections and mundane armor, it barely scratched him. Then he had to turn around and flee from the guards, letting Taral get away out the front door.
Albiet without his minions (the procyonisks were alive, but slated for 'interrogation') and without the goodwill of the Constantines.
The Constantines offered to let the party sit in on the interrogations, but the procyonisks couldn't be made to talk, even with magic -- Taral's hold on their spirits remained strong. In the morning, it was back to the hospital to check on Hesperius and get Shadarack to his appointment with Dr. Cursefiend. Oh, and have Jackie's 'sister' (the Illiski they'd kidnapped) looked at to see if her paralysis could be cured.
Hesperius was alive again, or at least whole again, and the bill came to only about 150k for the microsurgery and healing. When Shadarack went in to get himself checked, he discovered that Dr. Cursefiend was a robot -- or rather, an articulated body animated permanently by a magical spirit, who'd learned to become a doctor, and specialized in magical curses because it could see on the astral plane as easily as most people could on the physical.
He also discovered that the pink glow was, in fact, a colony of tiny microscopic spirits feeding off his aura, that devoured any magic that got near him. And that he was contagious -- although he'd already figured that out for himself, after spending the night in a hotel and pinkifiying the sheets. And that he was locked in quarantine until he could be cured, since an antimagical plague was a nightmare that, if it got out, could destroy civilization.
Some of Jackie's equipment was also infected, but he was only quarantined for a few hours before they were satisfied that Jackie himself was clean.
Then the note came from the Constantines, telling them that as promised, they'd secured an injunction naming the ship as Shadarack's property pending final judgment on the case, which was expected to take years... but, oh yeah, the ship had been stolen from Diemos storage during the spider attack a few days back. Sorry!
last session next session
The part with Shadarack on his own was done mostly on the car trips down to the game this week and last (when we didn't end up playing), using license plates instead of dice rolls. Conclusion: I need better eyesight to keep doing that.
Jackie wants to have the party go treasure hunting in Xanth, now. I told Adam when he wanted to play a character from Xanth that that was fine, but under no cirucmstances would I actually let him ever go back there, since I didn't think that I could handle the unique talents for each person, or all the damn puns. I guess I should have told the whole group.
Shadarack found himself imprisoned in the pyramid, stripped of all his possessions and left on his own. His captor -- a drakivolki wizard with two gun-toting aides -- asked him what he'd been doing there, and what if anything he and his friends had found poking around before being accosted by the robots etc. They told him that if he really *was* an archaeologist (as he'd claimed) that he might be able to find a place on their team. He still wouldn't be allowed to *leave*, of course, since if an accurate description of the city ever got out it'd be picked clean by treasure-hunting vultures in seconds, but he could live comfortably with them until they were ready to go public.
Shadarack told them he wanted to think about it for a while, and as soon as they'd gone started focusing on his luck. "Get me out of this cell!" It wasn't long before the cell door opened, and the wizard snapped at him, "Come with me!"
The wizard led him outside to where one of the pyramids -- the one that party had fought the tripod from, that had been badly damaged in the fight -- was glowing brighter and brighter pink. "What did your friends do to that pyramid, and how do I stop it?" the wizard demanded. Shadarack tried to bluff the wizard into letting him go so he could 'fix the pyramid' while the wizard and his staff fled to safety because it was 'much too dangerous', but the wizard didn't seem receptive to the idea of leaving his captive alone.
So Shadarack sulked as the wizard led him to the pyramid, again focusing his luck on 'Escape'. And so, just as the group reached the center of the pyramid and started climbing the ramp, the pyramid exploded! Shadarack was thrown to the ground, unhurt, as were the two guards, but the drakivolki was devastated -- his blue scale had disintegrated as he'd tried to shield himself from the blast, and his fur was gray and withered, like a very old man (which he hand't been before).
And all four of them were glowing pink, as were the walls, floor, cieling, and everything around.
One of the guards ran to help the wizard, and Shadarack led the other guard outside, into the now-dark city on the pretense of shutting down the pyramid before it did more damage. His escape attempt wasn't quite flawless, as the guard saw him in time to try to shoot him, but the guard's pistol didn't work, and he got away.
At least, to the edge of the city, where he sat by a tooth near the still-intact bridge of rail ties over the chasm, focusing his luck on escaping to the surface. For fifteen minutes he sat, focusing his luck but refusing to actually *try* to get to the surface, until finally the rock beneath him crumbled, dropping him to the ground far below.
He landed in a deep, soft patch of dust, soft enough for him to survive the fall, and while the giant burrowing worm creature attacked him, instead of getting swallowed he was only impaled and dragged around by the leg, and finally dumped in a worm tunnel large enough for him to crawl through, that led up to the caverns above (eventually, after a very long, winding climb). He looted a knife and a grappling hook from a convenient corpse, cursed as the magic healing salve didn't seem to work on the wound on his leg, and headed where his luck took him.
The trilobytes didn't take this sitting down, of course, quickly gathering to surround him and drive him towards the waiting turrets. The turrets were blind to him, though, and instead killed the trilobytes en masse as they entered the room.
After many tries, he managed to hook the grappling hook at the top of the 40 foot shaft they'd come down to enter this level, but he was carrying too much weight (in addition to all the junk scavenged off the dead corpse, he'd pieced together a suit of makeshift armor from the piles of debris the turrets were hidden in) and was pretty weak, and even in the low Martian gravity couldn't make it all the way to the top without resting. He tried to hang there to rest, but was worried about losing his grip (or something) and decided to slide back down and rest at the bottom.
While resting, he saw a light come down the tunnel towards him. He tried to hide in the pile of rubble, but the pink glow gave him away to the mine-cart-riding hannah that arrived to greet him.
"There he is! He's in the turret room," said the hannah, from safely outside the turret room, over a martian-style communicator. "He's right there." "No, he's definately in the kill zone, I don't care what the sensor readings say. Override manually and have the turrets lock on and fire." Which they did -- at the hannah himself, killing him almost instantly.
Shadarack wasted no time looting the corpse once the turrets had gone back into hiding. The communicator went dead as he picked it up, but he dragged the somewhat soupy body out of the mine cart, and scraped it out of the armor, which he put on in place of the makeshift mining armor he'd assembled. The PPF also stopped working as he picked it up, but the gun at least fired a laser when he pulled the trigger, although it looked awfully weak.
He hid the body in the rubble pile (although he couldn't hide the trail of blood smeared across the floor), and sat down to wait until he was calmer and more rested before climbing up the rope.
Meanwhile, Hesperius, Adam, and Jackie were preparing to rescue Jackie's alchemy set (oh, and Shadarack too maybe). There was a small town near the mine, a dying mining town (since the mine had dried up) dwarfed by a large, brand new Miracle Foundation outpost. The Miracle Foundation employees who showed Jackie to their public alchemy lab were sure to warn him away from the horribly dangerous mine, which was really dangerous and no one had ever found anything valuable in, despite all the rumors. TM. Jackie ignored the spiel, and did his alchemy stuff.
At midnight, Hesperius and Adam were rested, Jackie was finishing up his alchemy, and the mana for mages worldwide regenerated. Hesperius created a dozen or so EMP grenades to stun the turrets, some sulfur-based rocket launcher rings, and they headed back into the mine. They did spot a pair of people from the base following their progress with binoculors, but that wasn't about to stop them.
Hesperius was the first person down the shaft to the turret room, and spotted a smear of blood on the floor below, and a strange pink glow. To better aim at the turrets, he poked his head down to try to spot them -- and they popped up and fired at him! The first shot killed him instantly, then the rest ripped into his corpse as it tumbled lifeless to the ground at Shadarack's feet. Shadarack tried to fire back at the turrets, but his laser was useless.
However, Hesperius had had one grenade armed and ready to throw as he took his fatal glance, and as the others scattered across the floor, that one went off, detonating the others and filling the whole turret room with fractal bolts of EMP-laced lightning. All the turrets were stunned.
Jackie swooped down and bottled Hesperius' remains, hoping that he could be revived at a hospital (since bottle magic would hold him in stasis indefinately). Adam swooped down and tried to pick up Shadarack, only to have his armor lose its enchantment, and his PPF 'pop', as he touched the glowing form of his employer.
At that point, Shadarack mentioned that he was dispelling magic items on touch, so after a brief debate about whether or not to continue on to rescue Jackie's lab, they dragged him out of the mine at the end of a loooooong rope. And attached him to their vehicle at the end of a loooong rope, flying him through the air for an hour dangling in the breeze.
Shadarack was talked into paying for Hesperius' treatment (as bottled charity cases went to the bottom of the hospital's list for treatment, and when was the list ever empty?), and the doctors told the party that they could probably bring him back with most of his memories and faculties intact. They also called Karada, Hespirius' sister, and asked her about his nature -- she answered with the truth as she knew it, which was almost entirely false.
The party also set up an appointment to get Shadarack's condition looked at, for the next day, with one doctor 'Cursefiend'. That left them with some time. After doing a little shopping, Adam decided to contact the Constantines and have them set up his meeting with Taral. Jackie and Karada would go with him for moral and possibly physical support, while Shadarack would stay behind and watch over Hesperius' treatment, and try to find buyers for the assorted martian artifacts they had recovered.
The Constantines offered their own home, or at least the family mansion in New Skypass, as a neutral location where Taral and Adam could meet without fear. Each was allowed as many supporters as they wanted to monitor the proceedings, but they'd have to remain outside the chamber where the actual discussion would take place. Taral and Adam were scanned for any magic spells or items, and stripped of all weapons, before being shown into the chamber. They were warned that the mages on duty would be watching for any sign of magic, and would consider any spell cast to be a hostile action.
Taral had a long rambling spiel to give Adam about why he was chasing him (his beading ability would let Taral work through him more efficiently) and why he'd attacked him in the first place (Taral's job on Luna was to drive away Terran immigrants who didn't have proper work).
Adam found this interesting, but it was only a cover for the little mechanical spider Taral had kept hidden on his person to inject Adam with a hypnotic drug, so that when Taral told Adam to take the ring he was offering and let its magic affect him willingly, Adam found it hard to resist. He managed to shake it off before the spell finished taking effect, but didn't reveal that to Taral -- instead pretending to obey the Zox's orders until Taral dismissed him, looking pleased with his 'prize'.
At which point he turned Taral in to the Constantines for trying to use magic on him. Taral had given him three spells to bead to use on the rest of the party, and once taken away from Shadarack's person they were obviously magically enchanted, where they hadn't been going in. This alerted the guards to the 'there is no magic here' illusion Taral had cast, and they were ordered to sieze him...
...but Aphid, Taral's hacker, hit a button and set off the prepared scripts that took out the lights and communication, and unlocked all the doors, so that they could make their escape.
Of course the party wouldn't let them get away THAT easily. Jackie shot a 'steel wall' shell to block the hallway Taral was trying to run down, quite effectively -- the wall was invisible, but it was still as strong as steel, but was then charmed by Taral -- once he realized he was trapped -- to attack the guards (and bring their wrath down on him as well as on Taral and company). Taral's Procyonisks went invisible and backstabbed Adam and a guard, although the one going after Adam bumped him accidentally and alerted him in time for him to dodge her knife. Taral's Chittick fired wildly at Adam and Jackie, hitting once in four shots, with that not getting through Jackie's PPF -- and was then slaughtered by return fire from the guards, which he couldn't dodge and didn't have the armor to withstand.
Then Karada blew up the entire room with one of the rockets Hesperius had created earlier, given to her by Jackie. Karada's PPF deflected the blast, Adam captured the part that would have hit him, and Taral used magic to avoid harm, but the guards in that half of the room were badly injured... and the feriphal hacker and procyonisk sneaks were toast. And Jackie was alive, but unconscious.
The steel wall was also damaged enough to Taral to blast a hole in it with his magic and escape down the hallway, with Adam and two guards in hot pursuit. Karada was restrained by the Constantine mages before she could do any more damage, so when Taral turned one of the guards against the other, it was down to just Adam chasing him.
...and the next set of guards he came to, he convinced them that Adam had broken the truce, and that his friends had all been killed, and they believed him, opening fire at Adam. Adam had time to swing his sword once at Taral, but with the evil wizard's magical protections and mundane armor, it barely scratched him. Then he had to turn around and flee from the guards, letting Taral get away out the front door.
Albiet without his minions (the procyonisks were alive, but slated for 'interrogation') and without the goodwill of the Constantines.
The Constantines offered to let the party sit in on the interrogations, but the procyonisks couldn't be made to talk, even with magic -- Taral's hold on their spirits remained strong. In the morning, it was back to the hospital to check on Hesperius and get Shadarack to his appointment with Dr. Cursefiend. Oh, and have Jackie's 'sister' (the Illiski they'd kidnapped) looked at to see if her paralysis could be cured.
Hesperius was alive again, or at least whole again, and the bill came to only about 150k for the microsurgery and healing. When Shadarack went in to get himself checked, he discovered that Dr. Cursefiend was a robot -- or rather, an articulated body animated permanently by a magical spirit, who'd learned to become a doctor, and specialized in magical curses because it could see on the astral plane as easily as most people could on the physical.
He also discovered that the pink glow was, in fact, a colony of tiny microscopic spirits feeding off his aura, that devoured any magic that got near him. And that he was contagious -- although he'd already figured that out for himself, after spending the night in a hotel and pinkifiying the sheets. And that he was locked in quarantine until he could be cured, since an antimagical plague was a nightmare that, if it got out, could destroy civilization.
Some of Jackie's equipment was also infected, but he was only quarantined for a few hours before they were satisfied that Jackie himself was clean.
Then the note came from the Constantines, telling them that as promised, they'd secured an injunction naming the ship as Shadarack's property pending final judgment on the case, which was expected to take years... but, oh yeah, the ship had been stolen from Diemos storage during the spider attack a few days back. Sorry!
last session next session
The part with Shadarack on his own was done mostly on the car trips down to the game this week and last (when we didn't end up playing), using license plates instead of dice rolls. Conclusion: I need better eyesight to keep doing that.
Jackie wants to have the party go treasure hunting in Xanth, now. I told Adam when he wanted to play a character from Xanth that that was fine, but under no cirucmstances would I actually let him ever go back there, since I didn't think that I could handle the unique talents for each person, or all the damn puns. I guess I should have told the whole group.
